The room beyond was dark, the windows covered by tightly-drawn curtains, but the glorious stink of parchment led the delighted brigand to know he had come, at last, to the proper place. Thoughts of stealing swords fled from his mind, replaced with fevered designs on stuffing his breeches to conspicuity with as many tomes as he could manage. Reaching around in the darkness near the door, Jacobson found a bronze lamp with a queer glass bulb in place of a wick. There was a switch on its side, and Jacobson flipped it experimentally, was amazed as the bulb broke into a clear white light. What its lambency revealed was equally breathtaking; Jacobson moved reverently into the room, which was crammed floor-to-ceiling with books. By any rebel scholar’s measure it was a priceless trove, one that he lamented he had so little time and undistracted brainpower to digest.
Jacobson had learned to read and write at the feet of a disgraced scholar, a broken man named Khalit, who had run a small scrivening booth in one of the lower markets of Aguar. He was an old man, withered like a nut, his frail body draped in a patched mockery of scholarly attire; once, when exceedingly drunk, he had confided to a youthful Jacobson that he had studied at the Rookery, but been cast from the Isdori Order due to his penchant for accumulating obscure and forbidden knowledge. What this obscure and forbidden knowledge might have been was never conveyed despite Jacobson’s insistent pestering, and he ultimately settled for the rudiments of grammar and calligraphy in lieu of any deeper secrets, working alongside Khalit in his ramshackle booth drafting overwrought and often lurid letters to absent or reluctant lovers, copying trade contracts and receipts, or performing whatever other mundane or pornographic task was required by the old scholar’s ream of shady and illiterate clients. This had all been in Jacobson’s extreme youth, when he had yet to reach ten summers; the money he made alongside the disgraced sage had gone to his mother Rosalin, which that stoic and silent woman had utilized with excessive care, always managing to provide for her precocious son and younger daughter despite their family’s guildless status. Jacobson grimaced as he stepped towards the nearest bookshelf, uncomfortable with the flood of memories overtaking him. He saw, in his mind’s eye, Khalit falling ill in the bitter winter of his fifty-seventh year, the fever wracking his aged body and robbing him of his sight. He had died penniless and riven, leaving behind only a small collection of books written in his own crabbed hand. These the young Jacobson had kept close to him, reading and re-reading the accounts of ancient history and tales of disquieting travels until necessity had demanded their pawning. It was around that same time Jacobson had turned to brazen thievery in order to support his ailing mother, whose increasing delirium had prevented her from practicing her trade as a seamstress. She had died two summers following Khalit’s death, and Jacobson’s dear sister Lena had followed suit three cycles later. It was then that the young man had chosen to take up the sword in earnest, and marched off to his first ill-gloried campaign.
Interesting. Very interesting.
The alien voice echoed in Jacobson’s mind. He cursed and slumped against the long trestle of the reading table, newly aware of the mask clinging with claustrophobic diligence to his face and soul. The voice was that of Tamrel, a drowsy voice hinting at half-sleep and recuperation, but nonetheless in complete control and possession of his waking and subconscious mind. He could feel the parasitic spirit assimilating his past by slow degrees, prying open the sealed chests and vaults of his memory, stealing his experiences and claiming them like justly-won prizes. In remembering his past he had thrown open a deep sepulcher of recollection, which Tamrel set upon like a ravening ghoul. He could feel the bard moving in his mind, laughing faintly as he picked apart Jacobson’s memories of his stalwart loving and unloving mother, his long-dead sister bright as an evening star. With a groan of horror the big man wrenched himself from the past and forced his perceptions to the present. The bookshelves loomed before him, heavy with knowledge, and without so much as glancing at the gold-embossed words on the spine Jacobson ripped down a volume and set it with hasty reverence on the trestle table, his fingers straying over the fanciful cover. It appeared to be a text on martial economics, detailing the means by which the constant threat of Ak invasion was turned to a profit; Jacobson opened it resolutely, determined to drown his memories in the acquisition of new knowledge. He hoped quite sincerely that Tamrel would choke on it.
The book began with prosaic history, discussing the founding of the Seven Cities and the organization of the Isdori around the fundamental dogma prescribed by the Gyre Itself. It was history Jacobson was familiar with, as one of Khalit’s worm-eaten books had delved into similar matters, but this tome proved far more comprehensive, detailing the troop movements in several decisive early battles and chronicling the growing involvement of the Isdori in matters of war and trade. The creation of the Order of Taskmasters was touched upon in impressive detail, though the book constantly apologized to its ‘dear reader’ for many gaps and holes in its knowledge, blaming the incredible secrecy of the Taskmasters for the omissions. At turns Jacobson found himself irritated with the tome’s long-dead author, a Hedgewizard named Almannon Segitir, who persisted in inserting his own slanted observations and opinions amid the factual recounting, but by and large the book held his interest, and it wasn’t long before he had completely forgotten the porcelain mask clinging to his face, the magister brooding in the bathtub, and the twitchings of his alcohol-deprived tongue and ligature. A few fresh explosions sounded in the city, but Jacobson barely noticed; for hours he read, flipping the pages with careful respect, fascinated by the crudity of early warfare and scoffing at the apocryphal accounts of social hierarchy among the Aks, whom he knew to be mindless.
At some point, driven by a deep well of weariness, he began to drowse. The words of the book slid and melded before his eyes, and Jacobson found his thoughts artificially driven back to his past, specifically to the specter of his long-dead sister. Lena had been her name, of golden hair and silver laugh, a bright creature born into the lowest caste of urban poverty. She had been Jacobson’s charge, his first sworn liege; in the wake of their mother’s wasting death he had taken to ever-more brazen theft in order to support them both, haunting the marketplaces and slipping coins and priceless oddments from the pockets of low-level merchants who could scarce afford the protective magic required to seal their purses. Once or twice he had even managed to purloin a few priceless opals, the ancient wealth of Aguar, though the necessity of trading them in underground markets had sorely impacted their true value. Lena had chastised him for his light-fingered ways, but had also understood that his thievery was the only stopgap holding at bay her future as a wharfside slattern. They had not lived well, but they had lived, at least until the summer of Jacobson’s sixteenth year, her fourteenth, when Lena’s bright star had been obscured by the taint of plague. She had withered away much like their mother, much like Khalit, lingering on for an entire winter racked with coughs and shivers and a high fever that had scalded Jacobson’s carefully tending hands. When she had finally passed he had packed a satchel and departed from Aguar, left behind that golden city of tapering towers and bright, festive garb, never again to return; gone to bloody his sword and his soul, gone to wrench a charnel living from petty inter-state warfare. In his pocket he still carried a lock of Lena’s hair, now pale and fraying with age; unthinking, nodding over the tome, Jacobson let his fingers stray into the secret pocket sewn into his tunic. The hair prickled against the tip of his forefinger, and a small sigh reverberated through his mind, the false exhale of a creature that lived only by surrogate thought and breath.
She was beautiful. Yet all stars must dissolve into the void of death.
Jacobson jerked his hand out of the pocket with a snarled curse. Reaching up, he clutched at the mask, tugged at it viciously, spittle flying from his lips and congealing in the narrow mouth-slit. Tamrel laughed in the recesses of his mind, a musical, wicked sound; rising to his feet Jacobson slammed his face against the corn
er of the desk, again and again, until his brain felt like it was ready to swell out his ears. Only then did he collapse back into his chair and begin to weep, the tears coming hot and fast, marking the only moment in the last twenty years he had ever deigned to cry on his own behalf. Lena was his, only his; to feel her being consumed and digested like a hunk of meat was too much for him to bear, and so he wept, the tears caking the inside of the mask with hot, salty liquid. It was several minutes before he stilled the stream and regained some aspect of composure.
Such a display. What can you do with these selfishly cherished memories? Allow me to sing of her, Jacobson. I will compose a thousand odes to the hue of her eyes, the never-and-always fading flush of her cheeks. I will bind her flower in perpetual bloom, for all the aching world to relish.
“She’s not yours,” Jacobson snarled to the inner voice. The last of his tears burned away as angry blood flushed his cheeks.
And is she yours? My dear Jacobson, I think you are a truly selfish man. Certainly you are adept at shielding your mind from my influence, but the challenge is welcome. Your resilience makes you a most fitting host.
Jacobson ground his teeth. “You’ll not have her, and you’ll not have me.”
He heard Tamrel chuckle in response, the mirth sounding in his own chest. “My dear man,” his lips intoned, curving around the words with alien delicacy, “you are already my possession. You think that the mageling will save you, perhaps? He is a startling creature, a kindled glede among the ashes, but his quest is hopeless. There is nothing I cannot master, least of all your simple flesh.”
Jacobson closed his eyes, focusing on the source of the voice. He yearned to trail Tamrel back to his parasitic lair, find the nest in his own mind and set it aflame, but the voice came from everywhere, from nowhere, an utter infestation that beat in his every cell. “Damn you,” Jacobson muttered, his large hands curling into shaking fists on the table, fingernails leaving reddened welts on his palms that quickly healed and sealed over.
Curse away, my noble bandit. But understand you do it only at my whim. So saying Tamrel’s presence abated, his laughter echoing back into the crypts of Jacobson’s brain, where the ghoul would doubtless resume his feasting. Jacobson shivered and sat very still for a long while, his eyes boring into a page describing the first erection of chromox-enhanced fortifications along the Ilarks. Slowly, by trembling degrees, he unclenched his thick fingers and spread them against the surface of the reading table. They were his own fingers, his own limbs, his own breath and blood; yet he knew he was a prisoner in that selfsame flesh. Briefly he toyed with the notion of lunging for his sword and accomplishing the fatal deed while the minstrel was still chortling over his inevitable victory, but weariness stayed his desperation. At last, slumping forward, he buried his shielded face in the depths of the book and nodded off to its dusty, cloying aroma.
Jacobson dozed for half an hour, knowing little peace. His brain swarmed with thought, some his own, some of foreign manufacture; strains of unearthly music intruded on him, accompanied by haunting visions that ranged beyond the comparatively mundane realm of dreams. He was finally stirred from his restlessness by the sound of someone stumbling down the hallway towards the study, bare feet shuffling on the absurd carpeting. A hint of steam tickled Jacobson’s nose, and he knew it was Kelrob come fresh from the bath, probably all pink and glowing. He raised his masked face from the book just as Kelrob pushed open the study door and stood, hollow-eyed and shivering, beneath the lintel. The boy’s dark eyes were wide in his narrow face, his lips near-blue, pulled tightly over chattering teeth; Jacobson winced as the mage blanched in fear at the sight of the mask, then started to swoon.
Jacobson was up in a flash. Moving with preternatural speed, he caught Kelrob and eased him gently to the floor. “Lad,” he said tenderly, his huge hands parting the mage’s sodden raven hair, “what in the Gyre’s name have you been about?”
Kelrob stared up at him, tears beginning to crowd the corners of his wide black eyes. “I don’t think I can do this,” he managed to say, then burst into weeping, his body going limp in Jacobson’s arms. The big man released a whoof! of breath, surprised by the weight of the lad — clearly his bones were solid, despite the birdlike build — and hoisting the mage up in a tight grip he carried Kelrob down the short foyer, past the steam-belching washroom and the solarium with its garish light into the bedchamber. Here Jacobson deposited the sobbing magister, and kneeling at the bedside ran a slow, repetitious touch through his wet hair. It was all he could think to do; there was nothing to say.
Kelrob gasped in a breath, then turned his face from Jacobson. “Don’t look at me,” he rasped into the brocaded pillow, his hands clutching at the sheets. “I have failed you, and failed myself.”
Jacobson’s eyebrows rose beneath the mask. “Must have been a very dramatic bathing experience. You do look a mite drowned, lad. What happened?”
Kelrob shook his head, some small flush returning to his blue-tinged cheeks. “I had — a dream,” he said, the words emerging in an uncertain wobble. “I was in my ancestral house, in my old rooms. The sun was setting behind the hill, and the grapes — they were rotten, rotten on the vine.” He stopped talking for a moment, perhaps out of exhausted horror, perhaps weighing whether or not to divulge the rest of the dream. Jacobson waited patiently, grabbing a towel from the bedside table and drying at Kelrob’s cheeks and hair. The poor mage looked ludicrous in his grief, a fluffy woolen robe obliterating his stick-thin body; only his hands and head and bony ankles and long, pale feet protruded from the downy mass, and these seemed depleted sans context to the rest of his lanky form. At last he turned to Jacobson, and some mote of fire had returned to his eyes.
“In the dream, the villagers, the nithings, gathered for one of their rites. They came swarming over the hill, onto my father’s land — my father!” Kelrob cried out, and arched his back against the sheets, a brief madness overtaking him. Jacobson held him down until the writhing ceased and his breathing eased, then fetched him a glass of watered wine from the sideboard. He offered it to Kelrob, who turned his face away at first, then accepted the glass with a shaking hand. He drank down half the wine, spilled the rest, then fell back amid the sheets, his chest heaving. Jacobson sat back and patiently waited for him to continue the tale of his dream, or pass out, or suffer a second fit. The big man’s muscles were tense, the mask a forgotten ornament. It was several minutes before Kelrob could speak again.
“They burned him,” he said, the words emerging like flakes of ash from his lips. “They burned my father alive on a pyre, all the while dancing and reveling and keening. Then the house...began to sink, sink into the earth. I couldn’t escape, they held me back with spears and sharpened bones. And I died there, drowned in the earth. I was also,” he said, a shiver passing along his body, “drowning in body while I slept. Different element, same result.”
Jacobson listened intently, offered the mage another drink of wine, which he refused. “A dream is a dream,” Jacobson said, thinking of the unsettling visions he had seen in the depths of his own drowsing. “Lucky thing you awoke, lad. Can you breathe without pain? How do you feel?”
At this Kelrob’s lips curled into a sickle-smile, a hideous thing to behold. “I feel numb,” he said. “So many horrors have unfolded in the last few days that I can scarce number them. The events at the inn alone would have had me bedridden for a year if necessity hadn’t demanded action. And now, the city in flames, my brethren slain, all due to my continued foolishness and carelessness. Amid it all I discover I have been sold by my father, destined to marry a woman I have never seen. And you,” he said, rising and pointing a shaky finger at Jacobson, “are another victim, another being caught in the maelstrom of my deeds. You should hate me, you probably do hate me, but I’m also your only means to salvation.” This last statement clearly agitated Kelrob, and he struggled fully upright, the tears returning to glisten in his eyes. “I
can’t do it, Jacobson. I can’t move from this bed again. Any action I take causes death, no matter my intent. I can’t help you. You should kill me now, take my life for your own and all the others I’ve slain.”
Jacobson held up his hands at this invitation, his head shaking slowly. “The only throat I’m looking to slit is my own, lad.” Edging forward, he sighed and took Kelrob’s left hand, engulfing it in his thick fingers and squeezing gently. “Seeing death is a terrible thing. When I first went to war I blamed myself for every comrade that fell, and took to the bottle as a result. At length I came to realize that war was a callous business, that forces beyond my meagerness were driving us all to fight, to kill, to be killed. At that moment I shed some of the guilt, discarded the drinking, and fought on. Of course that was before I came to pity every Ak I was forced to kill; then the drinking returned in force.” He tightened his grip on Kelrob’s hand as he spoke, hoping that his words served some purpose, that he was not merely wounding the magister further. “In truth, I went to the Umberwood to avoid killing, or at least to minimize its necessity. But with every heart I still, I grow weaker. The first thing a good soldier must kill is his own humanity; then the business of butchery is easy, is even a pleasure. But I could never die inside, never quite slaughter my own essence completely. I am haunted, lad, by the death I’ve caused deliberately, with willful thrusts of a blade. What you must remember is that all this madness,” and here Jacobson spiraled his free hand in the air, indicating the world at large, “is the work of others. You’re not responsible for the depravities of Salinas, and you’re certainly not to blame for getting a surprise hitching. Least of all are you to blame for this demon,” he raised a fist to rap against the mask’s forehead, “and the death he’s brought to this city. You’re a brave lad, resourceful and quick of wit; you’ve ridden this madness in fine form, chiefly because you’ve been so busy dashing every which way trying to mend the audacity of others that you’ve scarce had a moment to crumble.”
Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01] Page 22
